


The Sister's Heart

by GeraniumSky



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Fairy Tale Style, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 05:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8131573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeraniumSky/pseuds/GeraniumSky
Summary: Once upon a time... a young nobleman became a monster.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Bedelia in this story is based on Bryan Fuller's original hope of casting Angela Lansbury. It would have been quite the different dynamic, yes?

Once upon a time there was a boy, still a boy but not too far from becoming a man. His name was Hannibal, meaning ‘grace of the lord’, and indeed he was graced. He had riches and a loving family. He was strong of body, fair of face, and sharp of mind. He was also the joy and terror of his tutors, for there was never a question that he did not think to ask, and never a consequence that he did not see to the end (and seldom a prank he could resist), whether in the hunt or in study. Hannibal was just, just mind you, too young and too graced to realise what riches he had; his happiness to him seemed no more than the usual.

Since this is a fairy tale, my dears, you will guess that young Hannibal’s happiness did not last, and you will guess rightly.

Hannibal’s father, a count and a great lord, was loyal to the king of his land, but not all the nobles were so. One spring, a young lord sought to overset the king. He gathered together a band of fellow traitors and they fought with those loyal to the king, up and down the land, through the spring and through the summer, and on and on, until the land was two years at war, and food grew scarce, and the second winter harsher than the first.

One day, the forces of the traitor came to the count’s gate, seeking food as much as they sought his land and his life. Perhaps the count was no general. Perhaps someone within the walls was not so loyal as Hannibal’s father was to his king, but there came a dreadful night when the count came to his son and spoke hurriedly to him.

“Take your sister and hide in the cellars.” Hannibal and his sister, Mischa, knew those cellars well. “Stay close to the old tunnel, and if all else fails, hide in the wood.”

“But I should stay and fight with you!” Hannibal pleaded. He burned with the desire to set arrows in these desecrators of his home. He would have gutted them like shoats if he could.

“You must take care of your sister,” his father said, for of course he wished to save both his children. “Please, dear son.”

So Hannibal and Mischa hid in the cellars, while terrible slaughter was done above, and when the men came seeking food (of which there was very little) and wine (of which there was something more) Hannibal led his sister to a great hollow tree-trunk where they had played in happier days, and they hid there, clutching each other against the cold and fear.

Finally, the traitorous army moved on, for they had eaten and drunk everything, and there was nothing left for Hannibal and Mischa except the ice-cold water of the brooks, and the few beasts left behind – the rabbits, and the deer, and a few hardy birds. Hannibal had learned to hunt for sport and now he hunted in earnest, in competition with the wolves. But aside from him and Mischa there wasn’t a human soul for miles and miles. They were all dead or frightened away, and Hannibal and Mischa still hid in the cellars of their old home and were all in all to each other knowing the bones of their parents lay scorched and scattered in the halls above.

Spring came, and also one day a man came to the forest around the count’s castle. He was learned, this man, and very tall, and greatly cursed. He had sought employment in this land, and been trapped by the war, and now he wished to return home, and so he travelled. He was also hungry, so very hungry and the land so empty, and thus he had become an ogre, for people were harder to find than animals but easier to catch.

He caught Mischa, as she looked for bitter greens among the young plants of the spring, and slew her and cooked her. While he gloated over his feast, young Hannibal found him, drawn by the savoury, delicious smell of roasted meat. (For you know, my dears, meat is meat and we would taste as delicious raw to a bear, and delicious cooked to an ogre as any creature.)

“Who are you that dares hunt on my father’s land?” Hannibal demanded, not knowing that it was his sister’s flesh he smelled. The ogre, evil old thing that he was, rejoiced when he heard Hannibal’s voice out of the dark, for here, he thought, was more food.

“Good evening, young lord,” he said, grovelling fearfully at Hannibal’s feet. “Forgive my trespass, but truly I did not know that any here remained of noble blood.”

He was not that long an ogre, and so the darkness of his eyes and the sharpness of his teeth were not plain to Hannibal, who regretted his rudeness to one that his father would have feted as a guest once upon a time. He said all that was proper, but his mouth watered dreadfully. The roasting meat smelled so good, and the ogre put on a smiling face and invited him to sit by the fire and eat with him, and so Hannibal, all unknowing, ate of his sister. Hannibal stopped before he was full, thinking of Mischa, and wishing for her to share the meal. He thought to request a goodly share (for this was his father’s land, and Hannibal’s land now too) when something – a whiff of fresh, uncooked meat perhaps, or the tang of raw blood – made him look upwards into the tree branches.

And there he saw his sister’s corpse.

Hannibal stared and stared, and his eyes grew dark as the ogre’s, and with a snarl he drew his knife and leapt upon his sister’s murderer. He was a strong old ogre, yes, but Hannibal was strong too, and cunning, and strengthened by his rage and his grief, and the ogre found himself with Hannibal’s knife at this throat.

“Mercy, mercy, young lord, and in return I will tell you how to keep your sister with you always,” the ogre whined.

“How, monster?” Hannibal’s knife was very sharp, and the ogre trembled. “Why should I not eat you, the way that you ate her, for surely you are no man and it would be no sin.”

“Mercy,” begged the wicked creature again. “Do you not know that if you eat her heart whole, then you will have her soul? But only eaten whole and raw.”

Now it was Hannibal’s turn to tremble, for he knew that Mischa’s soul belonged to her and to the Lord Above, but the temptation was too much. While he debated with himself, the ogre squirmed free, and ran away, laughing to himself, for he was indeed wicked, and he knew the bitterness that lay at the bottom of the cup that Hannibal was about to drink.

Hannibal paused, torn between his wishes. It would be a fine thing to kill the monster, but his heart yearned for his sister. In great grief, he took her body down from the tree where she had been stowed, like a hind in a larder, and even though he knew it was wrong he held her close to him only a moment before he cut her open and took out her heart. And because Hannibal had been the joy and terror of his tutors, he could not help but see how Mischa was like and unlike the deer and the boar and the wolf and the other creatures of creation.

There was even a little warmth left in her heart’s flesh, and mindful of the ogre’s advice Hannibal swallowed it, raw and whole.

As soon as he did it, he understood that he’d been tricked once more. For Mischa’s soul was within him, but filled with grief for her brother’s sin, and the heart began to cry “My brother! Oh, my brother!” until Hannibal thought he might run mad. Over and over, nothing would the heart say, except, “My brother!” Hannibal vomited the heart back up again, but still it cried without stopping. Hannibal took Mischa’s heart and carried it back to the castle, and left it in the darkest, deepest part of the cellar, but still he could hear it cry, never ceasing.

He took up his bow and arrows, and his knife, and his sword, and he followed the ogre’s trail, never resting, and when he found the ogre he fell on him with all the strength of madness and grief. The ogre was roused out of exhausted sleep and he fought hard, biting and tearing at Hannibal. But at last, he was subdued. With Hannibal’s knife at his throat, his dark, hungry eyes stared into Hannibal’s, and he wasted his breath for a last taunt.

“Ha! Made you eat!” And then Hannibal killed him.

Hannibal didn’t eat the ogre, as he threatened. Instead, he dragged the body back to the castle, and he hung it over the gate as a warning to trespassers and a guard over his sister’s heart (which still cried out far beneath the castle.)

At first Hannibal lived in the forest around the castle, for he was loathe to leave his home, but he found that the food which had satisfied him before, the meat of beasts and the plants of the forests, no longer did so. He thought of a tutor his father had provided for him, a very wise woman, and he wondered if she might help him, so he began the long journey to find her. But he grew hungry, in a hungry land. His pride wouldn’t let him take children; there were no Mischas for Hannibal, but grown men and women were his prey on his journey, and the more he ate, the less he cared to change, but he still remembered his tutor, and wondered what she might teach him now that he was no longer a child.

Finally he came to her house. The king still held this corner of the land, and while there was hunger and care there was no starvation. Bedelia came out, and welcomed him and grieved over him when Hannibal explained his plight as a landless orphan. She took him into her house, and began to teach him once again – deep learning and magic, this time, knowledge meet for a hard time and a young man who would need whatever he could gain.

Hannibal shed the last of boyhood in Bedelia’s house. And if the town was plagued with losses – the baker’s shrewish wife disappeared in the woods, the blacksmith’s surly apprentice found dead and bloodied with his tongue gone – no-one suspected Hannibal.

Well, almost no-one. Bedelia was a clever woman, if not always a wise one, and although she loved the boy she remembered she had her suspicions of the man he had become. But Hannibal smiled at her with all his grace and charm, and convinced her to teach him deeper and deeper magic. So he learned how to hide himself, and to discern the secrets of people’s hearts, and at last, he and Bedelia together made a great work. It was a mirror, not large, that you might hold in your hand, and if you looked in it you would see your true face.

When Hannibal looked in it, he saw himself black and gaunt, and always hungry; antlers branched from his head in sharp and grasping points. He turned to Bedelia, anxious that she might have seen his true face, but she gestured at him in denial.

“Only one at a time can look in the mirror. If I tried to look over your shoulder, the mirror would break.”

Hannibal offered her the mirror. “Look for yourself,” he said.

Bedelia did. She clasped her hand to her heart, in fear at first, and then she studied her face and nodded. “I should have no surprise,” was all she said. “And you?”

“No more than I expected,” Hannibal said carelessly. He was not shamed by his form – indeed it rather pleased him to be crowned with antlers like some dark king, after past griefs and humiliations.

“That, I do not doubt,” Bedelia said. She gave him back the mirror. “I think that you will make better use of this than I,” she said. “And now you must leave.”

“Must I?” Hannibal asked.

“Indeed you must, for this village is far too small to feed you, and I would be too tough.” She finally spoke her guess, and waited on Hannibal’s reply.

“Not if I cooked you slowly,” Hannibal retorted, stung by his dismissal, and a little afraid that Bedelia had guessed his secret. 

But Bedelia had kept a few magics to herself yet, and Hannibal could not lay hands upon her. “You have become a wild thing in a man’s skin, that much I can see without the mirror, and a wild thing needs a hunting ground. But not my ground, Hannibal.” Bedelia knew how men became ogres, and as a test she said, “Or perhaps you could go back to your father’s estates. The king has gained allies and strength, and you are count now, after all.”

Hannibal bowed his head a moment, hearing an echo of his sister’s heart in its grief and denial. “No,” he said. “I cannot go back there. But there are cities, in this land and others, and I can hunt there as well as anywhere.

Bedelia nodded, and gave him such money and gifts as she could spare, but she turned her back on him before he had cleared her gate. And thus Hannibal (and his hunger) set out into the world.

**Author's Note:**

> If I can gather the wherewithal to keep writing, there may be other stories in this style. I have working titles, (such as _The Hind-maiden and the Watchman Who Didn't Like to See_ , and _Alana and the Pigman's Pearl_ ) and that magic mirror would come into play in the last story idea which doesn't have a title. Who knows? For now, this stands alone.
> 
> I'm geraniumsky on tumblr too.


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